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Shelley Wong

Artist Talk

Shelley Wong

In her poems, Shelley Wong centers queer women of color to counter their marginalization and foreground their desires independent of motherhood and marriage. Her speakers transform the natural world and themselves, using beauty as a means of sanctuary and subversion. Wong seeks to re-vision the world against patriarchy and colonialism with women who navigate and inhabit a range of spaces. She is interested in using the page as a canvas, a field of queer possibility, to explore how meaning is assembled with silence, linebreaks, and breath. At SPACE, Wong will read from her latest work and answer questions.

Shelley Wong is a Kundiman fellow and the author of the chapbook RARE BIRDS (Diode Editions). Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Sixth Finch, Verse Daily, Vinyl, The Volta, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and scholarships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Fine Arts Work Center, and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.